Bitcoin Accepted in Russia

 Bitcoin Accepted for Oil and Gas under Sanctions.

Russia considers accepting Bitcoin for oil and gas

By Annabelle Liang, Business reporter

Russia is considering accepting Bitcoin as payment for its oil and gas exports, according to a high-ranking lawmaker.

Pavel Zavalny says "friendly" countries could be allowed to pay in the crypto-currency or in their local currencies.,Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he wanted "unfriendly" countries to buy its gas with roubles.

The move is understood to be aimed at boosting the Russian currency, which has lost over 20% in value this year.,Sanctions imposed by the UK, US and the European Union, following the invasion of Ukraine, have put a strain on Russia's rouble and raised its cost of living.

However, Russia is still the world's biggest exporter of natural gas and the second largest supplier of oil.... ' 

More Learning from Patrolling Spot Robotics

This kind of patrolled security, here on an oil rig, has been mentioned here before. Could be a mix of telepresence, and specific patrol routing.   With camera recording of visual, auditory and contextual  information.  That is data that can be fed into pattern tracking machine learning.

Boston Dynamics Dog Robot Learns New Tricks on BP Oil Rig   By Catherine Koppel in Reuters

Boston Dynamics is programming its "Spot" dog robot to read gauges, look for corrosion, construct maps, and detect methane leaks, now that it is working on a British Petroleum (BP) oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. BP's Adam Ballard said Spot's observational functions will improve the safety of rig operations by reducing the need for personnel. He said, "We believe a lot of that up-front, remote work preparation can be done with a remotely controlled robot ... being able to pan, tilt, zoom, and really understand the entire area in real conditions, real time." BP hopes to expand Spot's data-gathering capability in the future to enhance areas where humans are limited. ... ' 

Oil and Gas use of AI Technology

Worked with this industry for a while. Here a good non-technical overview:

Oil & Gas Industry Transforming Itself with the Help of AI   By AI Trends Staff

The oil and gas industry is turning to AI to help cut operating costs, predict equipment failure, and increase oil and gas output.

A faulty well pump at an unmanned platform in the North Sea disrupted production in early 2019 for Aker BP, a Norwegian oil company, according to an account in the Wall Street Journal. The company installed an AI program that monitors data from sensors on the pump, flagging glitches before they can cause a shutdown, stated Lars Atle Andersen, VP of operations for the firm. Now he flies in engineers to fix such problems ahead of time and prevent a shutdown, he stated.

Aker BP employed a solution from SparkCognition of Austin, Texas.

Partnerships are forming throughout the industry. Exxon Mobil last year started a partnership with Microsoft to deploy AI programs to optimize operations in the West Texas Basin. The AI is needed to interpret data coming from millions of sensors that monitor Exxon refineries all over the globe. Total S.A., the French multinational oil and gas company, is partnering with Google to better interpret seismic data with the goal of better exploiting existing assets.

Advances in machine learning and the falling cost of data storage are factors in the move to AI in big oil. “When you mention data at this scale to data scientists, you can see them start salivating,” stated Sarah Karthigan, data science manager at ExxonMobil. The company has a database consisting of about five trillion data points. “The intent here is that we can run our plants more efficiently, more safely and potentially with fewer emissions.”

Sarah Karthigan, Data Science Manager, Exxon Mobil
With the price of oil low, oil and gas companies are looking for efficiencies. Deployment of AI in upstream operations could yield savings in capital and operating expenses of $100 billion to $1 trillion by 20205, according to a 2018 report by PwC.  .... "